


Make Believe

by hrtiu



Series: Stronger than Fate [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: A little spicy but not explicit, Din's only in there for a hot minute, Established Relationship, F/M, Married Couple, They're adults don't worry, kinda silly but i had fun writing it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25796872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrtiu/pseuds/hrtiu
Summary: A Jedi forbidden romantic relationships and a soldier in her line of command—it's an epic love story of forbidden love, which is exactly why Ahsoka thinks it would be fun to pretend she was still a Jedi Commander and Rex was still a clone Captain back in the war. Rex isn't entirely sold on the idea, but he's willing to give it a try. How awkward could it possibly be?
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/Ahsoka Tano
Series: Stronger than Fate [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858399
Comments: 13
Kudos: 113





	Make Believe

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who hasn't read previous entries in this series, Rex and Ahsoka reconnected after the Battle of Endor, and Ahsoka is helping Din by training Baby Yoda. Baby Yoda used some Force healing to reverse Rex's advanced aging, and Rex and Ahsoka got married. They are both in their mid-to-late forties. 
> 
> Also this story will have a lighter tone than other entries in this series, and will also be a little more adult. I think it's still in the T range and there's nothing explicit, but the whole concept is just a bit more mature.

“Captain! What happened?”

“I’ve… I’ve been injured…”

“Where? Are you alright?”

“Um, I think it’s on my… thigh…”

“Let me see.”

“But we don’t have time! The Seppies-”

“They won’t find us in this cave, and you won’t be able to do anything until this is taken care of.”

“...Alright.”

“Here, let me see your wound.”

“I… I…” Rex gave up, dropping the feigned pain from his expression. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Rex scooted backwards across the roughly carpeted floor and Ahsoka removed her hand from his leg. Her face fell and she leaned back onto her heels, still crouched on the floor of their small bedroom in front of him. They were in their quaint home on Ossus where they’d lived together as husband and wife for a year now, which fact contributed considerably to Rex’s current feelings of foolishness.

“Really?” she said, her adorably sad face weaponized against him to great effect.

“It’s just… It’s ridiculous. I never would have done this during the war,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his armor. The old GAR-issue armor fit him now that his body had reverted to fit normal human growth patterns, but he still wasn’t quite used to it. He wouldn’t be wearing it at all if Ahsoka hadn’t asked him to participate in this absurd charade. They were married, they slept together on a regular basis. What was the point of adding on an entire storyline?

Ahsoka laughed and Rex couldn’t help but blush. She looked so beautiful in the form-fitting red maroon number she’d dug up from her wardrobe, and he still couldn’t quite believe she was his.

“That’s the point,” she said. “Of course neither of us would have done anything like this during the war. This is just a fun fantasy.”

Rex raised his eyebrows at her. “Did you fantasize about me? Back then?”

“I mean, sometimes… When I was a bit older,” she said, a little defensively

“Well I never fantasized about you,” Rex said stubbornly. “You were too young and my superior officer. So I’m having a hard time getting into… all this.”

Ahsoka narrowed her eyes at him. “Really? You never fantasized about me? Not once?”

“Not once.”

“Not even after Mandalore?”

“I mean…” Rex scratched the back of his neck and looked at the ceiling. A memory of his first evening on the Venator after Ahsoka’s return came back to him. He hadn’t seen her in a year, and she’d changed so much. She was more mature, wiser, and _beautiful_. Dreams—whether they be of the night or day variety—were frivolous and an inefficient use of time, and Rex rarely indulged in them. But that night as he’d gone to sleep his mind lingered in a state of semi-wakefulness, his treacherous thoughts imagining how the curve of her hip might feel, or how her full, burgundy lips might taste.

He’d forgotten about that long ago. The tragedy that soon followed that rare indulgence had tainted it, and Rex hadn’t allowed himself to think of Ahsoka as anything but a friend for a long time afterwards. But she was right—he _had_ fantasized.

“...Maybe once or twice,” he conceded eventually. “We were at war. People were dying, and like I said, you were younger then. There were a lot of reasons I didn’t see you the same way as I do now.”

“I know, but that’s exactly why this is just… fun make believe. Just imagine it was back during the war, but I’m older, and our friends aren’t dying, alright?”

“And you’re not a Jedi, and I’m not in your chain of command-”

“No, no, keep that in there.”

“Why?”

“Rex, that’s what makes it fun,” Ahsoka chided.

“I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you think the whole forbidden angle makes it feel… dangerous? Like, in a fun way?” she said.

“Well going against regs was dangerous in a very real way for the clones.”

Ahsoka groaned in frustration, then sighed, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, you’re right. This won’t be fun for either of us if you’re uncomfortable.” She rocked back onto her heels and started to stand, but Rex caught her arm.

“Wait,” he said.

Rex didn’t really get the appeal, but he hated the dejected look on Ahsoka’s face. Maybe this whole play-acting thing wasn’t for him, but he could at least try, for her.

Ahsoka looked down at him expectantly, and his grip on her arm tightened.

“Commander Tano,” he said, his voice taut and urgent, “I’ve been injured.”

A slow grin grew on Ahsoka’s face, and Rex’s stomach flipped. Who cared if this was weird if it made her happy? In an instant Ahsoka wiped the grin from her face and knelt down in front of Rex, her expression all concern.

“Captain, what happened?”

“I caught some blaster fire,” Rex said, deciding at the last minute to switch his injury from his thigh to his stomach. The thigh wound reminded him a little too much of the risque holovids that got passed around the barracks, and he’d always been proud of his abs. Still sitting on the ground, he bent towards his knees and clutched at his abdomen. “Right here.”

“Let me see.”

Ahsoka briskly moved to unclasp his cuirass, then followed it up with his spaulders and vambraces, needing to remove them to get to his blacks. He helped her along, adding a moan or a hiss of feigned pain in every once in a while for effect.

“We’re running low on medical supplies,” Ahsoka said as she unzipped the thick, sweat-wicking fabric of his black undersuit. “We’ll just have to make do.”

It suddenly struck Rex that nobody aside from the occasional medic had ever undressed him in his blacks before. It felt oddly intimate, even more so than when Ahsoka had done similar things with different outfits. She’d especially asked him to dig up his whole old GAR uniform for this, and he was beginning to understand why. He tried to imagine how he would have really felt, how he would have reacted, if he’d actually been in a compromising situation like this with a beautiful Jedi commander during the war. Ahsoka had already pulled the zipper of his top halfway down his chest, and his hand shot out and stopped her.

“Wait, Commander. I can wait for the medic,” he said tightly.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Captain. At least let me see how bad it is before we decide what to do.”

His hand stayed tightly gripped on hers for a moment, but she gently shook him off. He would have felt wildly conflicted in this situation, he knew. He would have felt how inappropriate it was to be so close with a Jedi he cared for and found attractive, but would also have recognized the practicalities of war and emergency situations. Maybe Ahsoka was on to something—there was something thrilling and exciting about experiencing a toothless, no-risk version of that kind of internal struggle.

She finished unzipping his top then peeled the arms down and around his wrists, leaving his upper body exposed. His entire body stiffened and he struggled to avoid shivering at her touch. It wouldn’t do to let “Commander Tano” see how much she affected him, after all. Ahsoka’s hands moved to his abdomen, feeling in a gratuitously unnecessary way for his imaginary wound. She decided his injury would be low on his stomach, a little below the waistline of the leggings of his blacks. Rex almost rolled his eyes at the placement, but then she started gently touching him there and his internal complaints stopped.

“It looks bad. Does this hurt?” she asked, gingerly pressing around Rex’s perfectly whole abs.

“Uh…” What she was doing was the opposite of hurting. “Yeah, it’s pretty tender,” he choked out eventually, adding a belated hiss for good measure.

“There’s not a lot I can do now except try to stop the blood.”

Blood? Rex updated his mental image of what was supposed to be happening in their shared fiction, and Ahsoka reached into a bag she’d brought with her for a long length of gauze. She’d come prepared, clearly.

She gently guided him to lean forward so she could reach around his back with the gauze, bringing their bodies close in an awkward not-quite-touching hug. Clone Wars Rex would have found this embarrassing but enlightening. This would likely have been his first experience of such physical intimacy. Despite himself, Rex gulped nervously.

Ahsoka completed two more rounds of wrapping around his stomach, then tucked the gauze in on itself to fit it snugly against his skin. She tied it tighter than he expected, considering he wasn’t actually injured. Once she was done wrapping him up, she helped him scoot back until he was leaned up against their bed, which he assumed in this scenario was meant to be a conveniently-placed rock in the cave.

“I’ll be fine in here, Commander. You should get back to the main force to help out,” he said.

“No, I’m not leaving you. We’re both staying here until backup arrives.”

“Commander, my life isn’t any more important than the mission-”

“That’s an _order_ , soldier.”

Rex swallowed his response, his instinct to obey kicking in. He saw a flash of doubt cross over Ahsoka’s face as she recognized his reaction, and he knew she would stop at any time if he wanted her to. He sent her a reassuring smile and winked, letting her know he was alright. This was even kind of fun, and he’d found himself getting lost in the role for a minute there.

Ahsoka’s face brightened and she flashed a quick smile before returning to her serious expression. He was still propped up against their bed, and she leaned over him, resting a tender hand on his bandaged torso. “You mean so much to me. I don’t care if it’s not the most tactically sound decision, I won’t let you die.”

Rex thought back to the way Ahsoka had found him waiting to die on Kamino and dragged him kicking and screaming to reverse the effects of his accelerated aging. Won’t let me die indeed, he thought. She was close to him now, her lekku spilling over her shoulders and just reaching his bare skin, and all he wanted to do was fit his hand behind her neck and close the distance between them. But he couldn’t. That’s not what Clone Wars Rex would have done.

Rex avoided Ahsoka’s gaze and licked his lips nervously. “Commander I, um, probably shouldn’t be this close to you.”

“Rex, you know I don’t care about what other people think. And there’s no one here to misunderstand, anyway,” Ahsoka said.

“Commander, I’m more concerned that it wouldn’t be a misunderstanding.”

Ahsoka’s eyes widened and the hand that rested on his torso tensed. She stared at him for a long time, then said “I thought it was only me.”

“Of course not,” Rex said, struggling to sit up straighter and gently stroking along her cheek. “I’ve been trained and conditioned to give up my life for any of the Jedi, but for you… For you I would choose to give up my life.”

Ahsoka crossed the last few inches of space between them, but she didn’t kiss Rex like he was hoping. A look of real anguish passed her features, and Rex was fully transported back to those times when they’d both held themselves to the strictest of codes—codes that never would have allowed for them to be together.

Ahsoka pressed her forehead to his, and Rex stopped breathing.

“I shouldn’t. _I can’t_ ,” she said breathlessly.

Rex’s heartbeat kicked into overdrive. _Ok, I could probably get into this_ , he admitted to himself.

“C-c-commander…” he managed to get out.

Ahsoka turned her head into his neck, her hot breath teasing his skin, and she let her full weight rest on him. “Please don’t call me that.”

“...Ahsoka…”

His hand went to her back and stroked luxuriantly up along her spine. She was wearing the same maroon dress she’d worn for their wedding, though today it was meant to remind him of her old battle dress from three decades earlier. It brought to mind the passion and enthusiasm she’d always worn like armor in her youth. It also had a very low back, giving him easy access to her soft skin,

Ahsoka pressed her lips to Rex’s neck and his arms tightened around her. He opened his mouth to speak but before he could say anything her teeth scraped gently along his neck in a way that made him gasp.

“Commander,” he struggled to say once he’d found his voice. “What you do to me… you could get kicked out of the Order… And I… decommissioned.”

Ahsoka pulled away from the crook of his neck and looked down at him with eyes conflicted by hunger and anxiety. “I know that, but I don’t care. I’m not supposed to want things, but I’ve never wanted anything more than you.”

Rex’s focus narrowed and all he could see was Ahsoka, her familiar face more aged than fit with this fantasy, but all the more beloved for it. He slid his hand between her lekku and her neck and pulled her back down to him, pressing his lips to hers in a passionate kiss. If he’d been truly dedicated to following their storyline, he’d have made the kiss awkward and stiff, like his inexperienced self had been. But this wasn’t supposed to be realistic so much as entertaining, and there were limits to his willingness to commit to the role.

Rex’s position propped up against the bed became increasingly uncomfortable, and they gradually slid to the floor. Rex cushioned Ahsoka’s head with an outstretched arm, and his other arm went to hook her leg over his hip. She sighed and pulled herself closer to him, her graceful fingers tracing the contours of his chest.

Ahsoka's hands landed on Rex’s shoulders and she rolled him over onto his back. Following his momentum, she moved to straddle him and leaned down to continue their kiss, but Rex pulled slightly away.

“Careful there, Commander. I’m terribly injured,” he said with a smirk.

Ahsoka frowned and swatted at him good-naturedly. “Ok, you don’t have to be like that. ...You didn’t mind though, right?”

Rex chuckled and raised a hand to run his thumb gently along her cheek, wiping away the uncertainty there. “No, of course not. You were right, it was fun. But if it’s all the same to you, maybe we can spend the rest of the night as ourselves? From the present?”

A slow smile spread across Ahsoka’s face. “Sure thing, Captain.” She leaned down and was about to kiss him again when the door to their room slammed open.

“Come quick!” Din burst into the room in a panic. “The kid swallowed a frog and I think it might be poisonooooWHOA-”

Din stopped in his tracks and stood frozen for a brief moment while Rex looked up at him from the floor, his shirt off, a pile of old GAR armor on the floor next to him, and Ahsoka draped over him. Din turned on his heel and walked right back out of the room.

“See me once you’re decent,” he said as he went.

Rex wanted to die of embarrassment. If he never saw Din Djarin again that would be just fine by him, but the kid’s safety came first. He struggled to sit up as Ahsoka got off him and helped him to his feet.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know the frogs that Din’s talking about, and the kid will be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she said, throwing him a shirt and grabbing a sweater to put on over her dress.

They both headed for the door, and as they walked Ahsoka’s hand found Rex’s.

“Rex,” she asked, slowing their pace slightly to get his attention. “If I hadn’t left the order, and if there’d been no Order 66… Do you think we would still be together?

Rex considered the question for a moment. The evening may have been meant for some romantic fun, but it had stirred up memories and genuine feelings that still affected him to this day. The clones had been taught to be willing to sacrifice themselves at a moment’s notice for the Republic, the implicit message being that their lives were expendable. The Jedi, on the other hand, had been taught not to care too much about individuals—that they must be willing to sacrifice their “attachments” at a moment’s notice. Those conditions led both the soldiers of the GAR and the generals leading them to be quick to let clones die. It had taken both him and Ahsoka a long time to overcome that conditioning and believe that their relationship was worth fighting for, and he didn’t know if they’d ever have gotten to this point if they hadn’t both been pushed out of their respective organizations by extreme circumstances.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “There were so many obstacles—some we’re still working through even now. But I’m glad we managed to find each other.”

“Me too.” Ahsoka smiled up at him and squeezed his hand. “And um, maybe don’t put your armor back in storage for a while?”

Rex laughed. “Whatever you say, Commander.”


End file.
